14 Untapped Blogger Outreach Strategies to Get High Authority Backlinks (And ONE That Generated 8 Links and 10,293 Hits)

Blogger Outreach is the key to getting more search engine traffic.

It entails employing some tested blogger outreach tips to target influencers in order to win extremely high quality backlinks.

But how do you find blogger outreach strategies that doesn’t annoy influencers?

Here are 14 untapped outreach tips that you can do to get high authority backlinks.

Warning: you are NOT going to find anything related to e-mail template outreach in here.

The Hot Water Approach is based on the idea that influencers must be ‘warmed up’ before you can ask them to do something for you. This goes back to the moral aspect of persuasion that I talked about in ‘E-mail Template Outreach Debunked’.

Again, the concept is simple: People are more open to doing things for people who have already done something for them. I think that this is the best approach for influencer marketing.

To do this, I simply do the following steps.

STEP 1: Find Your Power Influencers

Finding your power influencers is easy. You can do this in two ways.

First, you can search for your influencers on Google. Just do a search of your topic + inurl:blog.

Or you can use a tool such as BuzzSumo.

Just key in your topic and uncover influencers who have the most shares.

STEP 2: Connect with Them

Once you know your influencers, it is time to connect with them. I do this by keeping all of their channels in one Excel File.

Here are the details that I include in the Excel file: First Name, Last Name, E-mail, Website, Facebook, Twitter, G+, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest.

I also keep all of their websites in a feed aggregator like Feedly so that I can see all of their latest posts in one location. This way, I can easily comment and share their content.

STEP 3: Help Them

Then, I look for ways to help them. This can be as simple as pointing out some broken links I found in their site or it can be as complex as creating a video to improve their blogpost.

This strategy works because it builds more than just a connection with your target influencers. Instead, you become friends making them more likely to help you as you implement the other strategies in this list.

There is something about heroes that makes people so fond of them. No. It has nothing to do with the fancy mask and cape. It has more to do with the way they help other people.

In this strategy, you will use this strategy to position yourself as a hero to increase the chance of influencers mentioning you in their future posts.

Here’s how you do it.

STEP 1: Think About a Time When You Helped Someone and Share Your Experience

Think about a time when your product or service has helped someone achieve a tangible result. It may not even be an overwhelming result – it can be as simple as helping someone get from point A to point B.

Now, record this experience in a blogpost and be very specific about the results that you have generated. This is your Hero Post.

STEP 2: Look for an Influencer who is Doing Something Similar

Next, you’ll be looking for an influencer who is also helping the same people that you do. Look at their products and services and look at how they helped other people. Record anyone relevant in a spreadsheet.

STEP 3: Ask if You Can Collaborate

Then, ask if you can collaborate on something. This can be a product, blogpost or service.

Simply tell them that you are an author of a particular blog that has the same goals as them and you managed to help your readers through your product or service. Since you have the proof to back up your claim (the Hero Post), they will be more likely to collaborate with you.

Seeing these on my blog?

Well, that is for your eyes and entertainment.

You’ll agree with me when I say that blogposts without images can get pretty boring. Yet, so many bloggers are still doing this in 2017.

You’ll be surprised on how some influencers are doing this as well.

Fortunately, you can help them by sprucing up their post with images. How can you do this? Here are some steps.

STEP 1: Look for an Influencer with Text-Oriented Blog and Add Images to their Post

You’ll be surprised how some niches have blogs that are too text-heavy. Once you found an influencer with a blog like this, simply copy their post and add some images.

These images can be simple screenshots or screenshots with text. And if you have the graphical talent, you can also create custom headers for their blogposts. They will surely appreciate the extra effort.

STEP 2: Send it to Them

Once you are done adding some images, simply send the finished post to your target influencer WITHOUT asking for anything in return.

Why should you do this?

Because your goal is not to get a link. Your goal is to build a relationship.

Don’t worry. Your good deed will not go unnoticed and this will significantly improve your relationship with your target influencer.

Aside from influencers, there is another group of people that may be worth reaching out to. These are the supporters – or the people who constantly post at your power influencer’s pages.

It can be seen in a guest post.

or in a comment.

What makes supporters special is that they are already ready to promote or support pages. They are already commenting and sharing your influencer’s posts. So if you have something similar, they would be more than happy to share it as well.

However, this method will only work if you have amazing content that the supporters can share. There are different types of content depending on the your customer’s stage in his quest for a solution to his problem. You can learn more about this type of content in my content marketing case study.

Another great way to get a power influencer’s attention is to extensively review one of their products, service or technique. Why are they going to be interested in this? Well, it is a strong social proof that they are brilliant – it is a review that they will simply cannot help but share.

I notice this when I look at Brian Dean’s website. In his course, I noticed how he featured several business owners and their success stories.

Here is an example.

This got me thinking. ‘Hey, these influencers are willing to link and promote anyone who can prove that their product works’ – And that’s where this idea came from.

Another way to get influencers to help you is to provide some ‘proof of greatness’. This can be anything from your subscriber count, monthly traffic count or social shares.

For example, here is a screenshot of my traffic for one of my case studies.

By providing a ‘proof of greatness’, you are showing that you also have a something to offer – exposure to a blog that has significant amount of traffic, social shares and subscribers.

This is the method that got me instant links and traffic.

Here is a sample e-mail.

Notice how I used the fact that I was featured in another website.

It is really easier to be promoted if you have something to offer.

Sometimes, a product review may not be enough. This is true for influencers that have tools as their main product.

Take Tim Soulo’s Ahrefs tool for instance. There are many people who have written in-depth reviews about it.

He is also quite receptive about posts that discusses the tool as shown in his blogpost.

Creating another would just be too common to even get Tim’s attention.

But what if you compare the tool with the other tools out there? What if you relay your experience on how you explore different tools and eventually decided on Ahrefs. Wouldn’t that make your review better?

Now: You should not limit yourself to simple reviews and product comparisons. You should always create these reviews for a particular task, purpose or context. Instead of simply comparing the products as is. Compare them with a particular item in mind (example: keyword research as written above is a good idea). This will make the product comparison unique and more interesting.

One of the marketers that I deeply respect is Derek Halpern. He is the genius behind those in-depth video website reviews of popular marketers.

… And he did these for free.

Why did he do it?

Well, he knows the value of building relationships and that what he did. True enough, his blog had over 5000 subscribers in just 10 months. That’s what you get for giving away free website reviews.

I think that this is also an interesting way of doing outreach if you are in the Internet marketing niche. What do you think?

I’ll let you in on a secret: influencers simply love to get their egos stroked.

One way you can do this is to ask for their advice. You can do this by creating a crowdsourced guide.

What is a Crowdsourced Guide?

This is a guide that is a compilation of all the ideas of different experts in the field. This is a great way to position yourself as part of the niche and to connect with influencers.

How to Create a Crowdsourced Guide

STEP 1: Have an Interesting Topic

Influencers, especially the popular ones, always get tons of requests for advice. This means that they are less likely to pitch in on a topic that doesn’t mean a lot to them.

With this in mind, you should always study your influencer before you attempt to invite them to give a tip for a crowdsourced guide.

STEP 2: Tell Them Who You Invited

A cool trick to get some influencers to start talking is to inform them that you have also invited other popular influencers to contribute. This will encourage them to pitch in as it will mean that their names will be alongside another popular influencer.

STEP 3: Keep it short

Once you got them to say Yes, it is important to keep the question short. This way, it would be easy for the influencer to answer without taking too much of his time.

Another way to instantly connect with an influencer is through a simple blogger mention.

This is really easy.

First, you simply need to reference one of your target influencer’s blogposts or works in an article that you have published

Then, you can put a link to your influencer in your resource box.
And inform them about it.

Here is an example of a resource box in one of my old blogposts.

This is also a nice conversation starter if you are new to the niche.

Again, do this without asking for a link. Thank me later.

In the same way, you can also mention an influencer in the resource box of an infographic. What makes this special is that influencers have the tendency to share an infographic where they are featured. Although you don’t necessarily need to ask for a link. Usually, they’ll share your infographic in their social media channels if they find it interesting.

You may have heard of the content upgrade or what I’d like to call as the ‘Icing Technique’. This is when you look at the old posts in your blog and add something extra to it just to keep it updated (Thus, puting an icing on top).

Experts like Brian Dean and Neil Patel talk about this tactic and how it keeps your blog fresh without the need for new content.

But what does this have to do with outreach?

Well, it turns out that you can also do the same for influencers.

You see, influencers are busy people. They hardly have the time to create new blogposts much less update their older blogposts. Sometimes, they would just hire a writer to do these things for them.

This is the part where you will come into their rescue.

You approach them with this amazing idea of improving their content for free with no strings attached. – It is an offer that influencers simply cannot refuse.

Once they say yes, you can do one of the following:

Add a new idea

Add more list items

Add more steps

Add a video

… and the list goes on.

Just look at how Brian Dean improved Neil Patel’s content with video.

The result?

A new flourishing relationship with your target influencer. They got their eyes on you now and all you need to do is ask them to share one of your posts in their future roundups or content.

Sometimes, you don’t even need to ask for it. It is the law or reciprocation – they will be more than happy to help you because you helped them first.

Another way to celebrate the outreach spirit is to start converting some valuable blogposts into PDF checklists or worksheets.

Checklists or worksheets are a great addition to any blogpost as it adds an implementation-oriented element. This means that the content is not just for knowledge purposes but for implementation as well.

Now: You can do this as a favor for influencers in your niche. Explain how this can help them get more subscribers and just give it away out of your good will – no strings attached. They will be thankful and their eyes will be on you from that day forward.

I’ll tell you the truth – influencers can be crazy lazy.

This is the reason why they are not answering your emails.

And this is the reason why you cannot ask them to do anything like give your website a link, write a post for your blog or even just say ‘hi’.

But here’s a technique that can help you get their attention without disturbing their free time – the One Quote Technique.

How do you do this? It’s simple.

STEP 1: Look for an Influencer

STEP 2: Ask if You Can Quote Them Based on What They Have Written

The result?

You have successfully stroked the ego of your target influencer. You got their attention now. – This is a great way to do outreach especially if you are just starting to get your name out there.

These outreach strategies are powerful… but only if you act on it.

I hope you see the reason why outreach should be done out of good will with no strings attached.

Trust me. You’ll get more replies (and links) that way.

Are you ready?

Comments

13 Comments

Michael
on March 21, 2017 at 7:44 pm

Sounds great! I will give this outreach strategies a try. Hoping for the best result.

WOW. This is amazing. I never realized there were so many options for how to reach out like this. I really like the idea of connecting with people who’ve already shared similar content to mine. Fantastic. Thank you!

Fantastic tips. I have actually heard of the “hot-water approach” before but it was called something else, I can’t recall what. It makes so much sense though and I have seen it in action myself. It isn’t an obligation but it works like one. When you give someone something, they will “feel” obligated to do something in return. You can work this into any scenario online. I am going to bookmark this page. As a blog owner, I am always looking for new ways to improve my blog and beef up my earnings.

Great tips! From my experience getting attention from influencers is far from easy. The mistake that marketers make the most is asking something in return from the first outreach. Influencers get thousands of similar emails and collaboration requests, it won’t be easy to get they attention. You need a lot of patience and start to build a relationship slowly.

These are some awesome tips. I haven’t taken the time to do any outreach yet. I’ve just started getting into guest posting. However, these techniques look great and I will start to implement them after my next guest post.

Looks like these blogger outreach strategies have been working great for you. I guess most people think that they won’t get a response if they email someone about trying out their technique or sending someone a testimony.

Great job and glad to see everything is working out for you. Thanks for sharing these tips, I am going to bookmark it so I can come back to it after my next guest post.

Blogger outreach strategy is the modern way to build natural link backs to the website or blogs, which help to drive more traffic and boost search engine rankings.

These days, the most popular way is to connect with influencers and ask them to mentioned us in their blog posts, social media posts and on other platforms where they are more engaged with their audience. As an extra topping, we will have a chance to get mentioned in influencers audience posts and can read more people to spread an awareness of our brand.